Top Biller and Mindset Mastery with Andrea Rishmawi

Andrea Rishmawi [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:19]:
Few quick announcements before we get started. First of all, book of the month for the month of June is gap selling. Pick it up, read it, dive right in. And secondly, most important, the recruiting growth summit is back. It's going to be bigger. It's going to be better. Registration is free. Make sure to sign up.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:36]:
It's in the show notes. And also support the podcast by signing up for vip and getting a copy of the replays. All right, I can't wait for you guys to grow. So let's dive into this awesome episode. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. My special guest has literally been at the top of her recruiting game since she started in recruiting from company to company, she was always one of the highest producers. So we're going to talk about some of the secrets that she learned. Also, we're going to talk about how she made the jump into her own firm and everything that she learned, everything that she saw.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:09]:
She wanted to do something different within the recruiting world, so we're going to cover that. So, Andrea Rishmawi, I am so excited to have you onto the podcast today. Welcome.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:01:18]:
Thank you so much. And I'm so impressed that you can say my last name correctly. You're one of like five people in the world, so thanks. And the other ones are cousins.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:26]:
Awesome. Well, anyways, we always get started on this podcast about how you even ended up in this wonderful word of shooting. So, like, how did you show up here?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:01:35]:
It's a funny story. So you'll hear me talk about like, mindset and visualization and abundance mindset and all that a lot. I watched that movie, the secret, which I'm sure you've heard of before, right? And this was like in 2011, I want to say. And I made a vision board. And on my vision board it had a picture of Santa Monica Pier. And it said, I live here. And I don't think I knew much. I was living in San Diego at the time.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:01:55]:
I'm from Michigan originally. I don't think I knew much about Santa Monica except for, like, maybe I saw it on an episode of saved by the Bell or something one time. And I don't know why, but I just felt called to it and I was like, I really want to live there and I don't have a reason to go there or whatever. So I put it on my vision board, like, one day it'll happen. And promptly got laid off from the job that I was working at in software sales. So as soon as I got laid off, I was like, I guess this is how I moved to Santa Monica. And so I started applying for jobs, and I didn't even know what recruiting was. There's actually right around the time that that movie with Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake came out where she was a recruiter, and I was like, oh, that sounds interesting.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:02:30]:
So I applied for this job. I ended up driving up to Orange county for the interview, and I had no experience. You know, I'd done software sales, and I'm like, listen, if I can sell software, this doesn't seem that different. And they offered me the job, and it was in Orange county. And I was like, well, no, no, because my vision board says that I have to be in Santa Monica. I need to be in that office. And they were like, that's not how it works. Like, we're interviewing you for this office.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:02:52]:
So I made a deal with the hiring manager, and I was like, listen, what will it take for you to let me move up to that office? I'll continue to be on your team. But, like, how do I get to move up there? And he's like, you don't have any recruiting experience. Like, this is ridiculous. And I said, just tell me what it would take. And he's like, I guess if you became rookie of the year, like, you were the number one new person, then, yes, we would let you move to Santa Monica. And that's exactly what I did. So a year later, I was actually. I moved up earlier than a year.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:03:19]:
I moved up. About nine months later, I moved to the Santa Monica area, and I was the only person to work from that office. But report into the Orange county office.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:26]:
The vision board, first of all, like, we'll talk about how important it is to actually have a vision in front of you. Secondly, what the hell did you do your first year to get rookie of the year?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:03:34]:
It's really interesting. I remember thinking at the end of that year, people think this job is hard. I didn't really understand it. I started out in an environment and agency that was very like, boiler room, very like, everybody made a zillion phone calls, and you worked 25 plus jobs at a time. And they had all these tracking methodologies, and I came from software sales, so I was used to a really high volume environment. And I'm, you know, I think I've heard you talk about this actually on your other podcast, like that fear of failure inside of you, or like that thing that says you're not. If somebody else can do it, I can do it, too. And I had that in me.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:04:03]:
And I genuinely think that when you visualize something and you set your intention on it, and you sit in the feeling of what's it going to feel like when I have that thing? I just sat in that feeling every single day, and I looked at my vision board for five minutes a day and I was like, this is what it feels like. This is what it feels like to be number one. This is what it feels like to do this. And then when you do that enough, like, you take inspired action, right? You take actions that align with the person who's already there. And so I just found myself working harder than other people. I found myself in the office before other people. I found myself leaning in other people. And it wasn't because I have some bonkers work ethic where, like, I have no social life.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:04:38]:
Trust me, I had a very active social life. I just think that I took mindset really seriously, and that's actually been the driving force of my career.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:45]:
Okay, so rookie of the year there, and then you kept on growing, you kept on doing well year after year. And, like, consistent success is also tough. Talk about, like, the kind of the rest of your recruiting career up until where you're at now.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:04:57]:
Yeah. So I stayed there the first two years in recruiting, and then I moved to a small. So that was a very high volume environment, and it was very quantity over quality. There were a few people who stood out there as people who focused on quality, and one of them had gone and launched their own firm. So I reached out to that person. I moved to Vegas at some point. So it's a long story. I actually only lived in Santa Monica for about nine or ten months, and then I moved to Vegas on a whim, and I told my company, listen, I have to work remotely because I'm moving.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:05:25]:
So they allowed me to work remote. I was the only person ever to work remote there. And then I found this woman who launched her own firm and really focused on quality. And I'd learned a lot from her when I worked at this first company. So I said, yeah, like, I'd love to be in that environment. So I went to work for her, and she is one of the best recruiters I've ever met in my life. She was incredible at what she did. And it wasn't just on the candidate side or the client side.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:05:51]:
She was awesome at everything. And I learned so much that I knew that I was ready to take my next step. Right. So I did that for a little while. I moved to Vegas, living the dream. I went to a different firm that was much more entrepreneurial, where essentially you were running your own little business. Did that for six years, and then decided to block my own firm.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:09]:
Okay, so what made you finally make the move to launch your own company?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:06:16]:
I think that the biggest thing is that you mentioned earlier, I wanted to do things differently. And I found that in the world of recruiting, there is this intense competitiveness. And I think that competition is great if it's healthy competition, but there is also this kind of like a lack mindset, right. Or like a zero sum game. Like, I have to make the place men and nobody else can, or this is my client, or this is my candidate. I own this. And I always struggled with the idea a of the word ownership. When we're talking about candidates or humans in general, like, that's not a thing that we probably should be doing.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:06:51]:
But more than that, I knew. I found a partner, first of all, who we really shared a lot of the same core values, and we were both very focused on personal growth. And we started working together. Her name is Joanna. And we realized that we could create an environment that wasn't so focused on just the competition. We could focus on collaboration. We could focus on transparency and being really honest with our clients and with our candidates. We could create an environment that wasn't just, what are your numbers? But more about relationships and what value are you creating for other people.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:07:21]:
2023. We all know what was starting to happen in the market. And it was the first time in my career that I could say, I can slow down my desk enough on purpose in order to make a jump, because it's so hard, right? You have to leave your clients. You have to leave everything that's active. So I just kind of said, I'm going to have the best ski season of my life. And I skied 40 days that season, and I just purposely didn't pick up new clients. I closed out what I had, and we said, let's do it. Let's just take this leap together.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:07:47]:
And I knew no matter what, whether or not we built something big or we built something that was just for three or four of us, like I was going to do it with my best friend. We had the right attitude. We love working with each other. We called it 180 collective because we wanted it to be 180 degrees different than every other recruiting firm. Right? And more than that, like, we really wanted. It's going to sound so cheesy, but it's so true. We wanted to elevate the recruiting industry. I used to have this saying on my LinkedIn.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:08:13]:
It said, changing the reputation of recruiters one conversation at a time, because I feel like it's such an uphill battle. Right? Like, everyone's had a bad experience with a recruiter. Oh, recruiter didn't get back to me, or the recruiter sent me a ton of bad candidates. Doesn't matter what side you're on. It's like you're a used car salesman. And I thought if we could create an environment where we allowed people to be the best version of themselves and to create awesome experiences for the candidates that they work with, the clients that they work with, and then we would provide a great experience for the recruiters. All of a sudden, a rising tide. Was it rising tide raises all boats or something like that?

Benjamin Mena [00:08:46]:
Raise all ships? Yeah.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:08:47]:
Yeah, it raises ships. Thank you. And that's what we wanted to be. We just. We wanted to do it better, have a great environment, and, like, genuinely love the people that we work with and the clients that we work with, and say we don't want to work with clients who don't treat their people well or who low ball or any of that stuff either.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:01]:
Now you found your partner who is your best friend. Are you guys, like, the same, or you guys, like, polar opposites that work together?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:09:07]:
Yeah, I wouldn't say we're polar opposites. I'd say she's very complimentary to me, and I'm very complimentary.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:12]:
Okay.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:09:13]:
The thing we have in common is that we push each other, and I think you need someone. Like, when one person is down, you need the person that's not going to call. And just, like, you know, you can say, I'm having such a rough month, or I'm never going to close a deal again or what's going on? Like, she sees when I do that, and she's like, hey, let's get your mindset right. Let's get you back in the right headspace. Even if she's feeling the same way, and I do the same for her. So I think that's what's great. But, no, we are very different energy types. I'm like, literally, people have called me the micro machines man and the energizer bunny my entire life.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:09:41]:
Like, I'm nonstop all the time. I wake up at 530 every single morning. No alarm. Like, I'm ready for the day. And she's very like, I need an hour, first of all. Second of all, like, I've been around many people this week. I need some alone time to recharge. So very different.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:09:57]:
If you're familiar with human design at all, like, we are complimentary human design profiles, which just means that our energy types work really well together, as long as we both understand how they work.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:06]:
I love that you guys, like, bounce off each other and keep each other accountable. What about for a recruiter that's kind of like, you know, working at agency or they're working by themselves where they're kind of just don't really feel like they have that accountability. What were some of the things that you did early in those days to keep yourself going?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:10:20]:
I think that coming out of an environment, first of all, starting out in an environment that was very metrics focused, even when I wasn't reporting to someone who's telling me to do that, anytime that I felt like I wasn't being productive, I would go back to basic metrics and I would ask myself, okay, how many things did you do today that were like money making activities? Right. How many things did you do today? Did I sit in front of my computer for 8 hours because I felt like I needed to be there, or did I actually work for those 8 hours? Does that make sense?

Benjamin Mena [00:10:47]:
That makes sense.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:10:47]:
I think that's the biggest thing is just kind of always going back to the basics when I felt things were getting a lot of alignment.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:53]:
Okay. It was just kind of like, you know, some people have the opportunity to bounce stuff off other people and some don't.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:10:58]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:59]:
And we live in a very siloed world in recruiting sometimes.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:11:02]:
Well, I was telling you one thing that I do, and it's like a really cheesy thing, but I don't know where I came up with this, but I talk to the future version of myself all the time, so I'll use an example. That's not recruiting. Right. So I will have friends come over for dinner whenever everyone leaves, and I'll look at the kitchen and be like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do the dishes. I don't want to clean. I've had a couple glasses of wine, and I thought, okay, future andrea, I'm just going to do you this favor because I know that when you wake up in the morning, you're going to be super stoked to have the kitchen clean. So current Andrea is going to do the work for you.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:11:33]:
So I will do all the dishes, put everything away. And literally, when I wake up the next morning, I will look at the kitchen and go, oh, my God, past Andrea is the best. Thank you so much, past Andrea. And so I do that a lot in work, right? I'll look at myself and be like, you have a lot on your plate. And I'm like, oh, you know what sounds good? Doing a crossword puzzle. You know what sounds good? Going to the gym or just calling a friend and talking on the phone. And so I talked to the future version of myself, and I asked myself if I want that future version to be happy with the past version, currently the current version, then I need to put the work in love. That reminds that game, right? It's like, who do you want to be? And taking action from that place you.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:09]:
Were talking earlier about, like, you guys named your company 180 clock to be 180 degrees different. What are some of the things that you guys do that are completely different than what we're trained to do as recruiters?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:12:22]:
Yeah. Well, I think the first and most important thing is that we set our company up very different than a traditional agency, just in terms of how we work with recruiters. So, as an example, most people, I think, are familiar with, like, the way that real estate works. We'll take a company like Re Max. Right? Remax has an umbrella for their brand, but everybody that works there has their own little business underneath it, meaning that they have their own llc. They get paid as a contractor. And what I saw really early in recruitment is that you could be really, really good at this job, and you could be billing $500,000 a year, but you might only be making 150. And I just thought, that's a shame.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:12:58]:
It's a shame that we're paying people who are so good and are making such a big impact, so little. So what if there was an environment, and I know there are a couple out there that exist. I worked for one in the past as well. But what if there was an environment where people could be paid as business, so we essentially pay them as a contractor, so then we don't have, you know, as an entity. We're not paying people as employees, which means I don't have to deal with payroll taxes. I don't have to deal with, like, insurance, all that stuff. But really what I'm doing is I'm saving all of that money that I would be spending on a brick and mortar building for a lease and paying for all these other things that you would need for employees. And I just give that money back to the recruiters.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:13:34]:
So we pay like a ridiculously high commission percentage. That's almost as high as running your own business. But it allows recruiters who say, listen, I want to do the thing I'm really good at, which is I love to work with candidates, I love to work with clients, whatever it is. I don't want to figure out accounting, I don't want to figure out legal, I don't want to go chase invoices from my clients. So essentially, we created this, like, centralized services that allow for recruiters to collaborate together. We are spending money and building the brand. That's why I'm doing things like podcasts. It's why we do things like go to events and speak.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:14:08]:
It's why we're doing webinar series, because we want people to say, oh, that's a brand we know and we trust. So any recruiter that's associated with that brand, they get the benefit of that. And all they're doing is getting paid really high commissions and doing a really great job. As long as they're adhering to brand guidelines, which is literally just like treating people well, then it could be a really unique model where you have now a network of really amazing recruiters who have all different subject matter expertise. So if I'm a client manager and I bring a client in and I'm like, oh, I only do product roles, but I have people who do marketing and sales and ops and finance, then I can now bring in way more roles for my client. They get to work with me as an account manager. They have an awesome experience because I love that client, I love working with them, and I know that the people that are helping me fill roles are really, really good at what they do, and they're creating the same experience on the canvas side. So it's just this environment where it was like, we don't all have to run our own agencies.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:15:03]:
We can just operate collaboratively and get paid as if we are. Does that make sense?

Benjamin Mena [00:15:08]:
That makes perfect sense. I remember back in my first agency days, I think it was like, before I left, it was like, I think it was like 650,000 was my gross margin, and I think I made like 65k.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:15:20]:
Yeah, I'm sorry, say that number again.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:23]:
My gross margin for the year was about 650,000 and I made about 65,000.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:15:29]:
Cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:29]:
A year, but I didn't know anything.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:15:32]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:33]:
And then, of course, as soon as I learned stuff, I was like, wait, what?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:15:37]:
I think there's a place for that, right? Because you have to cut your teeth somewhere. And I'm very, very grateful for the companies that I worked with before because that's where I cut my teeth. It's where I built an understanding of what matters to me. So we're only bringing in really experienced recruiters. They have to go somewhere else and figure that out. And then once they build a skill set and they say, hey, listen, I want to be in an environment where I'm constantly pushed to be better. There are resources for me to get better, but I don't have a babysitter, and that's, like, what I call a manager. Right? I'm not interested in babysitting humans.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:16:05]:
I don't know. There are a lot of people who are really good at that, but that's not my jam.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:08]:
So at least on the candidates or the client side, like, you really, and this is some conversations that we've had, like, offline, you really care about the clients. You really care about their growth. Like, how does a recruiter learn how to, like, shift gears a little bit to almost, like, slow down to really be that true client partner?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:16:27]:
Yeah, I think it's mutually beneficial. Right. If I go in thinking I'm going to make a quick placement, it's a very different approach than, oh, let me understand their business problems, and then I can put the right person in place who can help them solve those problems. The better you understand their problems, the better equipped you are and to understand who's going to solve those problems. And also, by the way, let's be real. Most clients, when we first start working with them, they don't necessarily know what they're looking for, and we help them figure that out. We help them figure that out, and then we go, great. Here are the three or four.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:17:03]:
Like, we're very like, it's almost like a. We do a mix between retained and contingent, but we offer the same level of service, meaning, like, we treat all clients the same. So I don't want ever to send more than, like, seven or eight resumes. Like, it's a waste of time. Our whole. The whole point of a recruiter is to make your life easy, not more difficult. So if I spend a little bit more time on the front end, helping you get clear on what you need, then I know what I'm looking for. And then instead of sending 100 messages to candidates, I send ten, and I get seven responses, and then I screen all of them.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:17:36]:
Three of them are great matches. I send them to the client, and now the client's like, oh, my God, these are three incredible candidates. My relationship with that client is so much stronger. They're going to want to work with us over and over again, and they're going to want to tell other people about us. So we actually don't do business development. I've literally built my entire career, career on referral. And I was lucky enough to start with an agency that had a lead system. The leads I took from that system, I have relationships with.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:18:00]:
Twelve years later.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:01]:
Okay, so real quick, you don't do any business development. You rely so heavily on referrals, right? So we just talked about really doing a great job bringing candidates or bringing candidates to the clients. Like very focused, very tight niche, like, well developed candidate list. What else are you doing to get these referrals?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:18:19]:
When I first started out, I asked every really good recruiter that same question. I was, okay, well, how do you get referrals? But how do you get referrals? And they would always say, what do you mean? Like, they just refer you. And so what I realized is that the better you are, the more on target you are, right? The more time you say them, the higher quality of the candidates. That is what creates referrals. And so on my vision board, you can't see it, it's off camera, but it literally says referral engine, high paying clients, client attraction. So the day I decided to not do business development, right, was, I don't know, six, eight years ago, something like that. I just put it on my vision board and I said, clients come to me. And that is actually what happened.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:19:00]:
And I know that sounds very annoying, but truly, I said, clients come to me. And then I started getting client referrals. So when we launched this agency, it was a really interesting lesson that I learned. Somebody said to me, you can't build an entire business on referrals. Like, you have to do business development. And then for some reason, I believed them. Like, I don't know what I was thinking. I didn't trust my gut.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:19:19]:
My gut said, yeah, you can. Like, people have told you what you can't do your whole life and you just keep doing it. So why would this be any different, right? So I believed them for the first, you know, six months, nine months of this business. We were like, we have to do business development. We need to figure something out. We tried different things and it wasn't working. And then I just woke up one day and I realized, and actually, that's a lie. People, help me figure this out.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:19:39]:
Our go to market consultant, who is incredible, Will McGee, said to me, listen, lean into your superpowers. He was like, you know yourself, he's like, you're great in front of a crowd and you're great one on one building relationships. Like, you're great at connecting people. So do that instead of the things that you don't want to do. And I realized along with the conversation with a couple other people that I absolutely could build an entire business based on referrals. So instead of focusing on business development, I'm focusing on partnerships. And so we're going out and we're partnering with people where there's a mutually beneficial relationship. Right.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:20:10]:
So as an example, we work with a woman. We did a webinar series with her. Her name is Heather Stone, and she helps CEO's who are going through time of transition figure out if they need a right hand or like a second in command. Right. And for Heather, like, she doesn't do recruiting. She just works with the CEO's to help them figure that out and then help onboard that person, set them up for success. And she was missing the piece of, well, who is a good, like, how do you go find that person? So we refer her business by saying, hey, listen, client, we have this person, like, if you're not sure if you need a right hand or not, she can really help you with that. And then any clients that she's working with, whatever recruiting needs that they have, she sends them to us.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:20:46]:
And so all of a sudden now it's a beneficial relationship because we know that anybody we send to her, they're going to have a great experience and we're only going to look even better that we help them find her. And she knows that anyone who she refers to us, they're going to have an amazing experience and they're going to say, oh, my God, thank you so much for sending us this amazing firm. So that is a really good example. We're essentially building a partner network where we'll have double sided or mutual referral relationships. And that's where I think much stronger business will come from because it's a warm lead. They know who you are, someone's already sung your praises. It's just channel sales, except it's people are selling something they really believe in instead of just a random service that happens to attach to their software.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:26]:
Okay, so we're going to take a few questions on this, but I want to pause. So you really haven't been doing business development for seven years. You've had your own agency for now, about a year, year and a half. But you were also a top biller of the place that you were at by not doing BD. I want to make sure that we talk about that too. Like on a yearly basis. You were the number one. Number two, let me ask you this.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:21:48]:
I mean, how many, you know, let's say might take my first year in recruiting, which was based on elites, they like try to teach us how to do BD. And it was like candidate marketing. And I'm like, it was like fake candidates. I'm like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to lie. Like why? Like, oh, excuse me, I see you have a role. I have a candidate who's a perfect fit. And then like, you know the candidate, like, oh, we're interested.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:22:06]:
And you scramble and try to find somebody. Like, it's just such an inauthentic way to do business in my opinion. So like I said, there was a lead system. I was very lucky to have take a few really great leads from that system and then I turned those into referral sources. So we are in a really unique industry because there are two things. Like every single phone call that you have, actually there's three things you have an opportunity for. Number one, an opportunity to make placement. Right? Easy.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:22:31]:
You're talking to a candidate. My Google Meet puts thumbs up and balloons and I don't understand why. So sorry. For those of you listening, there's like a thumbs up that just popped up on the screen and I don't, we don't know how to control it. So there's an opportunity for replacement. The second thing is that there legit. This is going to sound really silly, but there's an opportunity to make a friend. I cannot tell you like the number of people in my life that I talk to on a weekly basis or I go and visit that were a candidate of mine at one point or were a client of mine at one point.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:22:59]:
Like I took to the woman who was the marketing manager for Duran Duran my first year in recruiting and I was like, this is the coolest job ive ever heard of. Like, why would you ever want to do anything else? So its really unique. And then the third thing is that you have an opportunity for someone else to sing your praises. So if you give somebody a great experience and you are who you are and you genuinely connect with somebody, you get a friend, a placement, a referral source. I can't tell you the number of conversations I've had when people are like, this is such a different conversation that I've ever had with any recruiter. And I always ask, what do you mean? And they're like, I don't know, we're having a real conversation. You're not just peppering me with questions and pitching me jobs that aren't relevant. So I think if you actually care to find out who the other person on the phone is, that is how you get business.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:42]:
And just for the listeners, she's been the top biller for year after year. So the slowing down and being different on the phone, it works. Yeah.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:23:50]:
I also think maybe it's because I talk really fast. I can still do a lot of phone calls and have all the very authentic conversations.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:57]:
I get that. That's why for the listeners, if you want to give off, I typically go by Benjamin instead of Ben because my last name is Mena. And if you say Ben and Mena really fast together, there you go. Anyways, I digress. Well, yeah, I'm just absolutely fascinated. And, okay, so for these relationships that you've had for the last, like so many years, like 7811, twelve years during the times where you couldnt work with them, what were you doing to keep these relationships up?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:24:28]:
I will tell you that im really bad at purposely maintaining a relationship for purposes of business. I genuinely wish that I was better at it. Its just that these people turn into my friends, and I cant emphasize that point enough. Theres a woman that I worked with one time, she was a candidate, and I literally on the phone just said, I think I'm falling in love with you. I love everything you're saying. And I represented to her for six weeks because it was a pretty high level position and we became friends over that six weeks. My main market before COVID was New York and I lived in southern California, I lived in Vegas, and I would go to New York maybe once, sometimes twice a year. So that happened.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:25:07]:
And I didn't visit New York, I think, for probably another year or so. But when I went, I was like, oh, my God, we have to meet up for coffee. And we met up for coffee, ended up spending like two and a half hours just chatting. And that's how I keep my relationships up, the people that I genuinely connect with. You make an effort to, it's not even an effort. You're just like, oh, that's my friend. Now I'm texting my friend. And that's the same thing that happens with clients.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:25:28]:
And I've been lucky enough that I've made really authentic connections to the people who were, you know, they work in talent. As an example, oh, I've got this other vp of talent who's hiring or they're a candidate. And like that one specific example, she landed their role as a CEO. And when she had to do hiring, I was obviously the first person that she called. I mean, that's really it. I wish I had a better answer than aside from, like, it's mindset and being yourself and really leaning into the things that you're really great at.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:55]:
Do you have a personal CRM to help track your relationships and that kind of stuff, or is it all just on your phone?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:26:00]:
Well, I haven't deleted a text message since the history of the iPhone, so I have to get the biggest memory iPhone because I have text messages from 2010. That's my only CRM. So oftentimes I'll say people's name and I'll put like a note next to their name. But, you know, sometimes, you know how you can remember, like, a weird thing? You texted somebody one time and you'll be like, we were talking about this really great salad. And I called it, like, the kitchen sink salad of all salads. And then I'll just search that term in my imessage and I'm like, oh, right, that's that person's name.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:28]:
That's awesome. And one of the things that we were talking about before we got started was also that you guys don't ever sell candidates on a roll, which is highly different than probably the way that many recruiters is trained. What do you mean by that?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:26:42]:
I say it all the time, and I've now heard other people saying it, too, because I say it constantly. But my job isn't to sell you on a roll. My job is to make sure you have all the information that you need to make the best decision for you and your career, because that is how we build our reputation. If I push somebody into a role and they're unhappy, or they realize later they should have taken a different position, or I sell them on taking a pay cut, whatever it is, if it's not for their highest good, if it's not in their best interest, it will come back to you, and that person will leave and the company will be upset with you, or that person will truly not be the right fit for the job, and the company will be upset with you. Or that person will realize later you didn't have their best interest in mind and they will be upset with you. And I think you just have to know. And sometimes it's hard, right? Because oftentimes you see something wrong and you know that you get a gut feeling when something's not right with a placement I have ignored it one time in my career, and I will never do it again. It felt so icky, and it was a bad placement, and you push somebody into a role, and I just was, like, never going to do that again.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:27:50]:
So I think you have to play the long game, and you have to know that doing the right thing right now might cost you money if you think about it that way. Right. Like, I might not make a quick placement, but that relationship could turn into so much more. Even if it's just that person leaves with a good experience and there's nothing negative out there about you, even if it's just that person leaves with a good experience. And then when they see you've launched your own firm, they go, oh, my God, you launched your own firm. That's so great. I remember having a conversation with you one time five years ago. By the way, I'm now a vp of product.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:28:20]:
We have some roles we need to fill. Like, you just. You just never know. So I think you got to do the right thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:25]:
So it was that one time where everything felt icky, as when you made the decision to, I need to do things differently.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:28:31]:
Yeah. I mean, I don't think I end up. No, I didn't end up placing that person. But you pushed people to interview or you push people to, like, in a way that I just. I see recruiters do it all the time, and they're thinking about what's best for them, like the recruiter. Instead of thinking about what's best for the people whose lives are actually impacting. I say that this job is unique all the time, but it's really true. Like, you're actually changing people's lives.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:28:55]:
I mean, think about that. I remember my, like, your favorite placements, there was a woman who was grossly underpaid. Grossly. And I got her. It was like a $50,000 increase in pay. And I didn't do that because I wanted a big fee. I did that because other people who had the exact same experience as she did, who weren't as good, were making far more than her. And I made the placement.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:29:19]:
And I remember my client a couple weeks later called and yelled at me, and he's like, she was only making this much because back in the day, you just saw, like, what you were making. And I yelled right back at him. And I said, she deserves every penny that she got in that role. First of all, it was a network engineer. And I'm like, listen, it's a female network engineer. Like, do not get me started. Secondly, all the other candidates that we looked at were in the same price range and she is better. So why would you punish her? Because she's been underpaid in the past and we got into it and ended up.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:29:50]:
He's like, this is one of the best hires I ever made. And everybody has a story like that where you know how much you change someone's life. That woman went from having to share a studio apartment, probably to, like, being able to have her own place. So I just think it's really important that you think about the people whose lives you're affecting.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:08]:
I feel like that is one of the hardest things to do when you just get started. The recruiting career, when you're dealing with the KPI's, you're dealing with the numbers, you're dealing with all the stuff. How do you go from shifting to learning and just doing the work to, I give a shit about people's lives.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:30:23]:
I don't know why they have to be mutually exclusive. You can do high volume and you can still care. You can say, I've got numbers to hit and you can still care. By the way, if you have all these numbers to hit, what are those numbers for? Right. They're so that we can make sure people are making placements. So if you're making placements and you're only sending three candidates instead of ten candidates, do you think that the person you're reporting to is going to care? No, they're going to be like, why are your numbers so low and your building so high? Can you teach other people how to do this? And I'll just start. But I should just point out, I was not always like, in the beginning, it wasn't that I wasn't focused on relationships. I just didn't know what I was doing.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:30:58]:
So I had very, very bad ratios. I mean, it was like 14 1st interviews to a placement or some ridiculous number because I was working tech and I'm like, I don't really know what a software engineer does, but you just fake it till you make it. And I wasn't in an environment where people were going. I remember getting in arguments with my manager because he would send me candidates and be like, oh, you should send this to the role you have. And I'm like, uh, based on what I understand about what you've told me about this job, I don't think that this is a fit. And he's like, we'll just send it to the client and they'll tell you. And I'm like, aren't they paying us like 40 grand to not have to figure this out. And we would get, I remember having to like, go into, he'd be like into the office and we would get in a screaming match in the office because I told him that I didn't understand how he was so successful, we sending such crappy candidates to his clients.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:31:39]:
So listen, at some point you figure out what matters to you. You asked me a question in the very beginning about caring about your client experience, right? All that is, is caring about what my client's perception is of me. I care about their experience. I want them to know that when they work with me that they're going to have a good quality experience. They're not going to dread getting on the phone with me. They're not going to dread getting an email with another candidate that's not a fit. They're going to go, oh, I got it. I got a candidate.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:32:07]:
I'm almost done with this hiring process. Nobody likes hiring. Like, hiring managers don't like hiring. So we have to make their life easier and we have to make it better for them. And if you don't care about their experience, it also means you don't care about your own reputation.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:18]:
So before we jump over to the next part of the podcast, we were talking about screw up of the week. What is that?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:32:24]:
So when I first launched this agency, I wanted to create an environment where I should say we, when we first launched agency, we wanted to create an environment. I make a lot of mistakes, and anybody who says that they don't is either, I don't know, the Dalai Lama or they're a liar. So most likely you're a liar. Everybody screws up, man. And what I think matters is, did you learn from the mistake? Are you going to make the mistake again? If you don't take time to acknowledge the mistake that you made and to own it, you will make that mistake over and over again. It's why I tell clients, you have to tell me what you like and what you don't like about a candidate. If I don't have that feedback, you're going to see the same bad candidates over and over and over again. But if you tell me, hey, we didn't like this candidate because they didn't have software as a service or whatever it is, then great, we won't send you other candidates that are lacking that.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:33:11]:
So internally, when we make a mistake, we send out an email with a subject line screw up of the week, and it says, hey, guys, here's the giant ugly mistake that I made. This week I shared an internal document externally, and now the candidate is asking me why they're only being submitted x amount when the budget is this amount. Whoops. It azure or. I sent out one our first month and I said, hey, screw up of the week. I got on a client call today and I said the name of my old firm instead of the name of the new firm because I can barely remember it because we just launched a month ago. So it's celebrating your failures because every successful person on the planet says, I made so many mistakes until I was successful. And I continue to make those mistakes.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:33:56]:
But, like, the mistakes are what make you successful. So acknowledging it, owning it, and saying it out loud to other people makes it not scary to mess up creates an environment where people are okay making mistakes and they're not hiding things. And if somebody else sees your mistake, they can also learn from it.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:12]:
I remember my first, like, year and a half in recruiting. I thought the top billers were perfect for sure. Yeah, I love that you guys are creating an environment where I met everybody's perfect. Like, we're. We're doing action. And as the more action you do, the more you're going to run into something.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:34:29]:
Totally. And things move fast in recruiting, right? We only do perm, but like, even in perm, things move quickly, so you are bound to make mistakes. However, if it is a spelling error, I will make fun of you about it. It's just like a thing that happens. Like, it's a group chats. I don't care. Even my partner of 14 years is like, can you not correct my spelling in the group chat? And I'm like, this is what you signed up for?

Benjamin Mena [00:34:48]:
Before we jump to the quick fire questions, is there anything else you want to share about everything that we've been covering?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:34:53]:
I don't know, man. We covered so much. Let's go straight into quickfire. Before I say anything that I have to send an email about. Screw up of the week for, what's.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:01]:
Your advice to somebody that's just getting started in the recruiting industry? To share?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:35:05]:
There's two things. The first is play the long game. We've been talking about it. It's like you be a human first and know that you're dealing with humans and these are their lives that you are affecting, and that's important and that the relationship will mean much more long term than it does in the short term. But the second piece of advice, if you were working on the client side, one of the best recruiters I've ever worked with her name is neetu. She said to me one time, and I'm sure she probably doesn't remember it, I should message her about it. But she said, when you're working with a client, don't ever make it about you and don't ever make it about the candidates. Make it about them.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:35:38]:
So if you're not getting a good response, like you're sending candidates and you're not getting feedback, a, it's probably because your candidates aren't that good. And so, like, you need to really look at that. But b, it should always be about, hey, I want to make sure we get feedback because if you like these candidates, they're interviewing elsewhere and obviously not mine, but telling the truth, they're going to be off the market soon. So I want to make sure that you get your pick of the litter or, oh, I want to. Hey, this candidate interview last week, we haven't heard feedback yet. I want to make sure that your company has reputation of a good candidate experience as opposed to the candidate is bugging me and I need information or can I get back to them, please? Because I need to know what's going on. So it's always making it about them and making sure that you're looking at things from their perspective.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:20]:
Okay, same question. But for somebody that's been around the block 510, 20 years, what advice would you give to somebody that's been in the game for a while to be successful?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:36:30]:
The same two pieces of advice. Probably. Probably the same, too. But I would also say, like, bring somebody up with you. If you're doing really well, don't be that person. That's like, I can do it all on my own and I don't need anybody. And like, oh, this person doesn't know what they're doing. Take time to help people be better.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:36:44]:
It's like we talk about all the time is elevating the industry. You can't do that alone. And if you want to go fast, go by yourself. You want to go far, go with other people. It's a cheesy saying again, but, like, it's very true.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:56]:
If somebody is making the decision, like, hey, I want to be a top biller this year. I want to be a seven figure biller. What advice would you give to them?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:37:02]:
I'd say invest in yourself. Whether that's with finding a mindset program that you align with or it's some other kind of personal growth, or it's investing in the tools that you need to do your job properly and not skimping because you're like, well, I'll do that when I make a couple placements. You have to invest in yourself first and foremost. I really believe that, like actually investing money in your personal growth, your mindset, your, what you can call it whatever you want, like success classes or, you know, joining a community where you have a coach, like personal coaching, group coaching, all that stuff is really, really important. And I find too much that people are just flying by the seat of their pants and they don't have a destination that they're headed towards. So getting clear on your goals and then saying, what do the top people in this industry do? What are their habits? What do they subscribe to? What courses do they pay for? That stuff matters because you should operate from a place of, I'm already there.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:55]:
And just for the listeners, you still have your, your vision board up, right?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:37:59]:
Yeah, I have one. I would make one every year. And there's a different theme every year.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:03]:
Take notes real quick. If you're not driving in the car, make sure you also get a vision board, too.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:38:07]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I followed this woman called manifestation babe. Katherine Zankina is her name, and I did a couple of her programs, and they're really powerful. One of them was a millionaire mindset or money mindset. That was one of the first things I ever invested in for myself. And it was really taking, like, visualizing and manifestation to the next level. It was like breaking down what your personal beliefs are about how hard things have to be with money and, like, realizing that it doesn't have to be that difficult. You just have to have the right mindset and you can do literally, I want to say anything you want, but, like, maybe not fly.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:38:39]:
So almost anything that you want.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:42]:
I love that. What does your current tech stack look like?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:38:44]:
Unpopular opinion. Rely heavily on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn in the same way that we say, like I say, I want to attract clients, I also say that I want to attract candidates. I'm a big believer in posting, and a lot of people think that's crazy. My last agency that I was with, I was constantly preaching about posting jobs on LinkedIn, and I made, I don't know, four or five times as much billing every year just in ad response candidates. Because I think that if you, instead of same thing as going and getting clients, like, why don't I put allure in the water and let those candidates come to me? Let those clients come to me instead of me going to have to hunt. Yes, we always source on roles as well. But if you have a clear understanding of the person you're looking for and you understand the way that LinkedIn works.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:39:25]:
It's essentially just a search engine. Then you know how to optimize with keywords and how to make something sound sexy and exciting for the right kinds of candidates. And then the other thing that we use that I love is bright hire. I'm obsessed with bright hire. Everybody has their own AI tool, but I have to tell you, I can type, I don't know, some ungodly number of words a minute. And so when I'm on a call, typically I just would type every single word that they were saying and then I would respond to them. I type everything they were saying again. And my team was like, you're an insane person.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:39:50]:
Nobody else is going to be able to do that. Like, what are we going to do about taking notes and stuff? So I found bright hire, which actually was launched by someone who used to work at LinkedIn. His name is Teddy and he's awesome. I met him at a conference. Bright hire has been a complete game changer in terms of being able to just be present on the phone with the person that you're talking to and then it's specifically for interviewing. So it's different than otter or fireflies or any of the other ones because it is made specifically for interviews.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:18]:
Love that. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career and success?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:40:23]:
There's a book, there's a couple, one of them. And also I say reading lightly because I'm an audible person, so I listen because I just like, I'm like, how many hours do we stare at a screen? I can't, like, look at a kindle and my eyes hurt at the end of the day to read a book, but I read a book called you are a badass by Jen Sincero. It's a mindset book, talks about essentially reminding yourself that you're awesome instead of constantly questioning yourself. That one was pretty big. And I think invisible women is a book that's interesting to talk about when we're talking about how it's impacted your career. But essentially it's a data driven look at why the world is not built for women. And I'm not someone that's like, you know, oh, men are terrible. And like, women are the best.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:41:00]:
We are. We're amazing. But not all men are terrible. It's just that look at society and we see the ways that it's broken and the ways that women are affected. What I like about this book is that it's a data driven explanation of that. It's not people are terrible, and here's what they've done. It's that because of the systems in society. As an example, you walk into any office and you see women with like shawls and blankets wrapped around them because it's so cold.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:41:25]:
Because offices were originally for men and men run warmer, literally, their body temperatures are higher, and so the AC is set as a standard at a lower temperature to make sure that everybody is comfortable. Then you bring women into the office and all of a sudden we're freezing and nobody cares. And they're like, you're crazy person, and you need to eat more food or have better blood flow. But in reality, that's just the way it was designed. So I really like that because what it did was it helped me understand that everybody has a different perspective. Like, women are affected in different ways, men are affected in different ways, people all over the spectrum have different perspective in life. And when. When I go into a conversation with someone, I remind myself that my perspective may not be theirs.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:42:05]:
And I need to listen and understand where they're coming from so I can understand what their needs are, so I can understand what's going to be a good fit for them, whether it's a client or a candidate. All of a sudden now I care about their experience and I'm not putting my own stuff on them. That was a very long, drawn out way to get from why cold offices mean better placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:24]:
But I love that. So you've been highly successful pretty much every single place that you've been recruiting. What do you think has been a huge driver of your own personal success?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:42:34]:
I feel like the people who listen to this are going to be like, can she stop talking about mindset, please? That is. I mean, truly, I think that is more than anything else. In my last agency, I did trainings on it, like mindset, and everyone find it annoying when I said that. They're like, what do you mean? You just look at your vision board and you're successful online. I mean, it's a little more complicated than that. But if you know deep inside you that you have the potential to be the thing that you want to be, and you can start to see yourself there, then you start to operate from that place and you take action based on that. It's really not a very complex system, and I think there's a willingness to make mistakes that we talked about. That's a big piece of it.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:43:12]:
There is a drive, that internal thing that says if somebody else can do it. I can do it. All of those things come together every day. I feel lucky. I think that being grateful for where you are every day, no matter what's going on. And I do a gratitude list every single night before I go to bed. I don't write it in a journal. I just, like, say it out loud to whoever's with me.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:43:29]:
So sometimes it's Joanna on a work trip. Sometimes it's my partner. Sometimes it's a friend who's staying the night. And everybody knows if you're staying at my house, you're doing the gratitude list at night. We do that together. Everybody says two or three things that they're grateful for, and everybody has an awesome time. Because when you start from gratitude and you start from a place of God, I'm so lucky. Whatever shows up in your way that day, it just doesn't seem as difficult.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:43:51]:
Like, the obstacles, you can kick them out of your way much easier than if you start from a place of what's going to go wrong today.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:58]:
Powerful. If you had the chance to go back in time and have a cup of coffee with yourself or a glass of wine with yourself, the very beginning of your recruiting career, would you tell.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:44:06]:
Yourself, listen to your gut. I think that we all have something inside us that, like, you know, when you're doing the right and wrong thing. So I think listening to your gut is important. Not every client is right for you. Probably a good lesson to learn. I think if something doesn't feel right, don't do it. If you start working a role and you're like, I don't feel like this is going to be a healthy environment for people, or you're working with a candidate and somebody is like, it feels like there's like that spidey sense there's something weird is happening here. It's just to listen.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:35]:
It's amazing what your gut can tell you. It's insane. If you had the chance for future Andrea from five years in the future to come back to today, what advice do you think that she'd give you to today?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:44:47]:
Ooh, this is a very good question. I think she would say, you probably should have skied that one more week this season because, you know, you could have, but it was snowing, and then you were like, I don't know, I'm kind of tired. I probably should work instead. No, I think. I think my attitude in life has always been, if you like who you are today, you cannot have regrets because every mistake you made, everything you did right, every interaction you had. That's the thing that led you to be the person you are right now. So if you like yourself today, then good. Your past is your past for a reason.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:45:21]:
So I would hope that future Andrea would say that same thing to me. She'd be like, you were in the right place. You were doing the thing, because here we are, and you did the thing that you wanted to do. So whatever steps you took to get there doesn't matter if it was ugly or pretty, you did it before I let you go.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:36]:
If somebody wants to follow you, how can they do that?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:45:39]:
So I am not big on social media. I'm not gonna lie. A couple of handful of years ago, I got off social media. Like, when it was just all too much, I was starting to mind challenge me. It was like, just take two weeks off and see how you feel. So I got off social media, and two weeks later, my thumb was still going to the spot on my phone where Instagram was. And I said, well, that doesn't feel healthy. So I took another two weeks off, and then I was like, I'm never going back.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:46:01]:
So I don't do social a ton. But obviously, LinkedIn is something that we all have to use on a daily basis. So LinkedIn is a great place. And you can go to 180 collective on LinkedIn, or you can find me Andrea Rishmawi on LinkedIn. We did just launch an Instagram account for 180 collective. So it's 180 collective recruiting on Instagram. And I am making videos. I have done.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:46:23]:
We have a system. I don't actually log on to Instagram because I will not allow myself. I just don't trust that I will. I have crazy ADHD. Like, actual, actual diagnosed ADHD. And social media is. You know what it's like. You start scrolling, like, I'm gonna look at this one video, and then 20 minutes later, you're like, oh, boy, how many calls did I miss? So I upload videos for my assistant, and then she puts them onto Instagram for me because I do not trust myself to have access to now.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:48]:
I mean, if you want to get laugh. I started last week catching myself again during, like, a little bit of a lull, and I had to download opal again, which is, like, a hardcore blocking software.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:46:57]:
Oh, my God.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:57]:
On my phone that, like, it literally blocks. I'm a news junkie, too, so, like, yeah, blocks all the news sites off my phone during the working hours. So I totally get that.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:47:05]:
I have a friend, she said to me one time, and she wasn't talking about social media. But she was just talking about in general. She's like, listen, she uses the term money making minutes. I think I mentioned that earlier. And she always says, like, if I'm going to waste time being in front of a computer, it better be money making minutes. Like, I better be actually doing something. If you're not going to be in front of your computer, don't. Right.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:47:22]:
If you're going to sit around on social media and you're going to go do other stuff, like, I don't have social media open in my tabs. I have like 4000 tabs and not one of them is social. And I think it's because I don't want to sit here at a desk and kill time. Like, we only have so much of it. I mean, allegedly, like, we don't know. We could be reincarnated, but we have so much of it in this current state. So I'm like, everybody knows about me that I'm a nut job about being efficient. I love efficiency.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:47:46]:
Like sometimes to a fault. Like, I will bend over backwards to make sure that we make the most of our time. But yeah, if you want to be out doing something fun, then go do something fun. And don't sit here thinking about the fun stuff that you want to do. Like do your work work when the work is there to be done and then reward yourself by going and doing things.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:01]:
If a recruiter is interested in the 180 collective, what should they do?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:48:05]:
So our website, one, it's all spelled out. We played with this a lot when we first launched. I was like, I feel like if we have actual numbers in our URL, it's like very 1994. And I just wasn't down with it. So it's oneeightyco.com and there's a join us tab, or you can find us on LinkedIn or you can email me. Hello. All of the ways to find us.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:28]:
Awesome. Well, Andrea, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Andrea Rishmawi [00:48:32]:
Hmm. Well, we're going to be doing a series on our instagram called recruiting is like dating. So if you have thoughts about why recruiting is like dating, because we all know that going on a first date is like going on a first interview. We all know that getting an offer is like getting an engagement ring. And I have been talking about this for years and years. Fun story. I used to write a blog about dating when I lived in San Diego. I was like a serial dater.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:48:54]:
And I went on three or four new first dates a week. So I have much experience in that realm and we always using these analogies with our candidates and clients about kissing frogs and dating. So if you have ideas or stories about how recruiting is like dating, we would love to hear them at hellone 80 co.com dot.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:11]:
Well, that's awesome. Well, Andrea, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. I just wanted like one. I love the mindset that you talked about because, you know, every single top pillar that I've had the chance to interview, it's funny or it's not funny, but they just talk about how mindset is the difference that it took from them going to be an average biller to a good biller, to a great biller. Also talked about how being different is so important and being true to yourself. I think that's one thing that we typically lose in recruiting, is like, we go through promotions, we go what we're supposed to do, but we forget the authenticity and how to be true to ourselves while doing this work. So I want to say thank you so much for sharing and for the recruiters out there listening. I want 2024 to be your best year yet.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:50]:
Keep crushing it, guys. Thank you.

Andrea Rishmawi [00:49:52]:
Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.